Talk:John Tyndall

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[edit] John Tyndall

At the time when he lived, Ireland and Great Britain formed part of a single state, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. However, his family had been established already for several centuries in Ireland (see article on Tyndall family), and as such he was as British as Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone, Charles Stuart Parnell, and as Irish as the 1st Duke of Wellington, etc. Let us agree then that he was Anglo-Irish!

Seneschally yours!

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Is it so difficult to understand that Tyndall, like Wilde, Shaw and so many others, was Irish and not British? if you insist on propagating "knowledge" via the Internet, please try to get your basic geography in order.

MS

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Tyndall describes himself as British. He strongly believes that there is no such distinction. Whether or not you think he is "technically" irish, it is perhaps worth mentioning that he considered himself british.

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Everyone in Ireland was considered British at that time, since Ireland was a British colony. Yes, including all of those rebels who fought to have that title removed. But that doesn't mean they weren't Irish. And there IS a distinction between Ireland and Britain - one is an independent country and the other is a collective English colony. Even in the context of the 19th century, he was Irish. I don't see why you felt the need to make that comment. Do you accept the IRA as British then?

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John Tyndall worked in the Irish ordinance survey. Upon completion he transferred to the English survey, where he was in fact dismissed. Reason - he lodged a formal protest to the survey regarding its inefficiency and its treatment of the Irish. After working on the railroads for some years, he went to Germany to further his research, before returning to England as a lecturer at the Royal institution, where he is noted to have made vast contributions to his field. He later went on to lecture in America. He was Irish. Too bad he couldn't get a fair deal at home under British colonial rule.

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For the last year we've been transcribing Tyndall's correspondence for eventual publication (we're historians of science at York University in Toronto). You're both half-right - but what really animated Tyndall, at least in his first years, was religion, which was inextricable from his communal / national identity. Tyndall considered himself an Irishman when writing his letters to the *Liverpool Mercury* complaining about the treatment of his co-workers on the English survey. But in his early years he also followed his father John, a staunch Orangeman, in his dislike of the Catholic majority with whom his fellow Protestants lived in an uneasy truce. Tyndall (jr) enjoyed debating various theological principles, like transubstantiation, with local Catholics. Sometimes the truce was broken. During a contentious election in 1840 or 1841 his uncle Caleb shot into a Catholic mob that had surrounded his house and was chanting insults - the bullet hit a woman in the leg, and he was put in jail, though more for his own protection. Around the same time his father was struck in the head by another large gathering of Catholics. In his private correspondence with his father he was very disparaging of Catholics, using awful names to describe them - but Tyndall still saw himself as an Irishman.

[edit] Blavatsky quote supposedly from Tyndall

In response to a question someone placed at the Wikipedia Reference Desk, can anyone find if Tyndall said the following, and where, as quoted by H.P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled"(1877): [1]("It is not so long since Professor Tyndall ushered us into a new world, peopled with airy shapes of the most ravishing beauty. "The discovery consists," he says, "in subjecting the vapors of volatile liquids to the action of concentrated sun-light, or to the concentrated beam of the electric light." The vapors of certain nitrites, iodides, and acids are subjected to the action of the light in an experimental tube, lying horizontally, and so arranged that the axis of the tube and that of Vol. 1, Page 128 THE VEIL OF ISIS. the parallel beams issuing from the lamp are coincident. The vapors form clouds of gorgeous tints, and arrange themselves into the shapes of vases, of bottles and cones, in nests of six or more; of shells, of tulips, roses, sunflowers, leaves, and of involved scrolls. "In one case," he tells us, "the cloud-bud grew rapidly into a serpent's head; a mouth was formed, and from the cloud, a cord of cloud resembling a tongue was discharged." Finally, to cap the climax of marvels, "once it positively assumed the form of a fish, with eyes, gills, and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was displayed throughout, and no disk, coil, or speck existed on one side that did not exist on the other." This does not sound like the down to earth prosaic researces by Tyndall described in the Wikipedia arricle. Edison 04:39, 22 January 2007 (UTC)